I embarked on the Medium (ditto; fresh worldgen worked no problem) using the Fortress Defense mod as I figure a cliff fortress would only look proper if it were arising from corpsefields of dwarven enemies! Playing with my usual personal rules; very limited cage traps and weapon traps, from captured weapons only.
One season after my first migrants brought me to 23, I am besieged by beakwolves. My poor axe-dwarves are barely armored, with a smattering of copper shields and caps and breastplates. The fight is short and brutal; only four dwarves survive (one dwarf's death involves nearly every extremity ripped off one by one), with the captain scoring five personal kills. There's a few small veins of tetrahedrite, and tons of silver - but so far, there's no iron. Every level has tons of silver but I can't find any iron. I finally cry uncle, and use reveal just so I don't spend hours mining for something that may not be there - and it isn't there. Silver veins as far as the eye can see though, which give me some epic ideas for the interior if we can survive.
My only hope now is caravans, but the goblin iron 'caravans' are only just starting to arrive as lightly equipped ambushers, and so far I've had to beat off further sieges by Stranglers, Tigermen, Blendecs and Naga. Fortress Defense is relentless - I'm only at the start of year 3, with 53 dwarves, and I think and it only gets more punishing from here. There's no tin either, beyond importing, so even bronze is tough to get. The first bar of steel I manage to make, some possessed dwarf goes and makes a freaking bone ring out of it*. Thankfully I catch a big break, and a later steel bar becomes an artifact shield, and gives me a legendary armorer! I'm going through wood like mad to smelt invader gear (lots of bismuth bronze), but the trees are running out and it looks like I better start planning my first magma piston. Question - nanomage, how do you get the elves to bring more wood? I got like 8 logs in the last visit.
* same dwarf, now legendary bonecrafter, went on to make mountains of beak wolf bone bolts, the masterwork bolts funding our trade and the rest instrumental in fending off Tigermen, Stranglers and the Goblin ambushers - showering them with the sharpened bones of our enemies while giving my dwarves much needed xbow training! So I suppose I can forgive him for using a steel bar to make a bone ring.
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Topic: The Great CLIFF Challenges! (Three Challenges for all interested!) (Read 5214 times)